King, Queen, Bishop, Knight, Castle/Rook, these pieces all make sense in an ancient game of strategy, right? And then there's the whole row of pieces that are just... pawns. Yawn. As it turns out, they haven't always been so homogeneous - in one version of the game they all had their own titles and backstory.

When I was a kid, my dad taught me how certain chess pieces move by having me analyse the shapes of the pieces themselves. The rook, a castle made of horizontal and vertical lines, moves horizontally and vertically. The bishop, which has slanted lines, moves diagonally.

I was never much good at the game, but I vividly remember sitting there at our dining room table, watching the man explain all of this with glee (he even added eyes to the bishop with a marker and nicknamed it "Joey Bishop" - what a dad). Now as a parent myself, I'm convinced that playing chess is a wonderful way to bond with your child.

Board games are a safe place to play out conflicts with your family and friends, with the understanding that once the game is over, everyone is on good terms again. That also makes them the perfect place to take out all your petty frustrations and revenge fantasies, under the guise of good fun. Here's how to destroy your opponents with dick moves that will feel like cheats, but are all sanctioned by the rule book.

Forget the World Chess Championship: we're here to talk about Chessboxing.

The rules of chess have remained consistent since the early 19th Century, but that doesn't mean our approach to the game has stayed the same. Here are some intriguing and surprising ways the Game of Kings has changed its shape over the past 150 years.

Brief news items of note for Lifehacker readers, including: The World Chess Championship gets interesting, Frank Herbert's Dune makes a comeback, the ten countries with the highest average wealth.

You can play chess against a machine on just about any computer, but that's not nearly as fun as playing with real pieces. If you want to build a robot to play against for yourself, Maxim shows off a Raspberry Pi powered board.